


lover, be good to me

by extasiswings



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: Backstory, D/s themes, Developing Relationship, Feelings, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-20 12:08:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19376404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: Henry is fourteen the first time he kisses a boy. He’s twenty-three the first time he’s able to do so openly, to makechoicesabout himself and his life that are really, truly his.[Companion tomess me up (no one does it better)]





	lover, be good to me

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [mess me up (no one does it better)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19313266) by [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings). 



Henry is fourteen the first time he kisses a boy. 

He thinks about it before that though. He thinks about it a lot, especially the day his dad sits him down and explains the birds and the bees, when the whole conversation feels like a farce, like something that doesn’t quite fit, a great game of pretend. He remembers lying in bed afterwards and trying to think about girls, about soft secret places and curves, and feeling...nothing. Absolutely nothing, his mind sliding instead to short cropped curls and boys in polo gear and firm thighs clamped around horses. He falls asleep like that and wakes up sticky and even then he knows, he _knows_ that he can’t be like this, he can’t ever be visible and open and honest, not when he doesn’t fit, when he _can’t_ fit what’s expected of him. And it sits on his chest and it crushes him. 

But he’s fourteen when he finally kisses a boy. John Marlbury, in the stables at school after polo practice, and it overwhelms, escalates the way such things do with teenagers who don’t know what they’re doing, just know what feels good, and it’s fast and messy and they’re just finishing when someone walks in and—

Henry covers John’s mouth with his hand to muffle him as footsteps pass by, and John shivers and Henry blinks because _oh_...that’s interesting. 

He doesn’t think about it again until he’s eighteen and at university, going to parties and trying to avoid letting his eyes linger too long over other boys. And then one night, he gets kissed in a dark corner, and he’s desperate, rising up on his toes and fisting his hands in the other boy’s hair, shoving him back against the wall, and the other boy moans into his mouth and it’s good, it’s good, he likes that. He likes it a lot. 

He learns a lot of things at university. He doesn’t learn what it’s like to love, but he learns what it’s like to fuck. He learns what he likes. And what he likes is pinning hands to a mattress or tying them up, saying exactly how he wants to be touched when he does, making someone shiver and beg for him—

He likes control. 

He likes getting fucked, too, but he likes control, _needs_ control. And when he thinks about it, it’s—every decision, _every_ decision is made for him in every other area. He doesn’t want to psychoanalyze himself, but it makes sense. That he would want to take that control back somewhere. That he needs to take it back somewhere. Because it’s fucking unbearable. 

There’s something soothing in it, even if it never lasts. Even if everyone Henry thinks he might be able to fall for is inevitably turned off by the reality of NDAs and him being photographed with random women, pretending to be something he’s not, always always pretending—

Shaan knows. That Henry goes home from every one of those fabricated dates and finds someone to strip the shiny veneer of false publicity away. He probably knows about the rest, too. About the silk ties and blindfolds and leather and everything else, all the things that let Henry sink into a different space, a space where he can breathe for five minutes, where he is his own man, where his choices are his own and someone else trusts him to be responsible, to take care of things. He _needs_ it. He craves it. 

Control. 

Pez finds out by accident. They’re half drunk and they pass an advertisement for Fifty Shades of Fucking Grey and Henry rolls his eyes and goes on a rant about unhealthy, unsafe bullshit practices and it’s not until he stops that he realizes Pez is dead silent and staring at him with eyebrows up to his hairline. 

“Mate.”

Henry flushes, and not just from the alcohol. 

“It’s not—“ he starts, and backtracks when Pez makes a face. “—okay, it is what you think, but it’s not like—“

“Hey, no, whatever,” Pez interrupts, slinging an arm over his shoulders. “It’s not a big deal, it’s just...unexpected.”

“Because I’m a prince?” Henry replies, with more than a hint of bitterness. 

Pez is the one to roll his eyes then. “Because you’re _you_ ,” he replies. “The shy nerd who I had to nearly forcibly drag to a club so you wouldn’t stay in your room all night with bloody Shakespeare. It really is always the quiet ones.”

And what else is there to do but laugh?

Alex, though. Alex is a damn revelation. 

Henry regrets every second of their first meeting at the Olympics, but Christ, the first time they meet, Alex is all tanned skin and long eyelashes and lips that Henry thinks he might die to kiss, and he wants him so badly he can’t fucking breathe. But. Then he remembers Alex is the son of the woman who might be the president of the United States in less than six months and probably straight anyway and he can’t, he can’t, he can’t—

(Doesn’t stop him for thinking about it for months though.)

And then there’s the after. After New Year’s. After the _after_ of New Year’s. When Alex shoves him up against a painting of Alexander Hamilton and kisses him until he’s aching and Henry damn near decides to hell with the state dinner because he wants so badly. After the polo match, when he sees things in Alex that he’s not sure Alex even sees in himself and it makes something in him go hot but also desperately soft because oh, he _wants_ to praise this boy, wants to teach him and lay him out, take him apart, make him say _please_. Wants to give him everything he needs, even the things he doesn’t know he needs yet. 

(Because if Henry needs control because he can’t find it elsewhere, Alex has too much of it—always running, always trying to fix things for everyone else, always thinking about the ten-year-plan—and Henry wants nothing more than to take over for him for just a minute and show him it’s okay to rest.)

“Do you trust me?” Henry asks in Berlin, when he finally can’t stand it anymore. Because Alex may have tied him up, but Henry corrected his knots, and Henry can still remember the sound Alex made on his birthday when Henry pinned his hands. 

He _really_ wants to hear that sound again. 

“Of course I do.” 

So, Henry ties him up. Ties him up and fingers him open—not enough to fuck him, but enough for him to feel it—and when Henry finally lets him come, Alex is so gorgeous Henry can hardly even look at him. 

“Thank you,” Alex says later, quiet and shy, curled so tightly around him Henry isn’t sure he’ll ever let go. And Henry’s heart breaks and reforms in the same instant because this boy, _this boy_ , oh he loves him to distraction. 

( _And to destruction_ , adds the cruel whisper in the back of his head, and Henry banishes it quickly. This is his space, _their_ space. He doesn’t have to think like that in it.)

It can’t last. Henry knows it can’t last. Because he doesn’t get to keep things like choice and love and happiness. But he clings to their moments together, to every flirty text exchange, to every soul-baring email and telephone call. To lazy afternoons (for Alex) and nights (for Henry) over FaceTime where Alex smirks and sasses and goads until Henry snaps and tells him everything he would do to him if he were there and Alex laughs because that was the entire point. 

He clings to the soft moments most of all. The afters when taking care of Alex isn’t about sex but quiet kisses, gentle but firm embraces, murmured praises. Where he can look at Alex, blissed out and fully relaxed, and be entirely too pleased for words because, _I did that, no one else_.

Henry clings until he panics, because they’re in a lake and Alex is going to say _I love you_ and that _can’t_ happen, Henry can’t hear that, because then when he loses it, when it’s inevitably all yanked away from him—he’s not sure he could survive it. And he can’t control Alex’s feelings, but he can control _himself_ , at least in this. 

So he runs. 

(He’s never claimed to not be at least a little bit of an idiot. Thankfully, for his sake, Alex is slightly less of one.) 

Henry is fourteen the first time he kisses a boy. He’s twenty-three the first time he’s able to do so openly, to make _choices_ about himself and his life that are really, truly his. He buys a brownstone in Brooklyn and it’s impulsive, but it’s an act of triumph rather than rebellion. The day Alex moves in, Henry kisses him in front of an open window, sunlight spilling around them both, and he wants, he loves—and he can have it. Without having to do a thing but be himself. 

(There’s still a set of silk ties in the nightstand, though. Just for fun.)

**Author's Note:**

> Subtitled, "Henry likes being in charge in bed because it's one of the only spaces in his life he's actually allowed to control anything, in this essay I will--"


End file.
